Particular embodiments generally relate to business processes.
An application platform may implement business objects to support different business solutions. A business object, for example, is a software model representing real-world items used during the transaction of business. A business object may comprise a SalesOrder object model or an Organization object model. Instances of these object models, in turn, represent specific data (e.g., SalesOrder SO435539, ACME corporation).
A business object may specify business logic and/or data having any suitable structure. The structure may be determined based on the requirements of a business scenario in which the instance is to be deployed. A business application for a particular business scenario may require many business object instances, where the structure of each has been determined based on the requirements of the particular business scenario.
A customer deploying a business solution may desire changes to a business object included in the business solution. For example, a customer may require a field (e.g., SerialNumber) that does not exist within the Product business object of a business solution. In addition, another customer may require an additional node or query within the Product business object of the same business solution.
Some conventional application platforms support the addition of extension fields to nodes of existing business objects. Consequently, these application platforms are able to store data associated with instances of these extension fields in a primary persistency (e.g., a relational database, flat files). This data can then be consumed by user interfaces, queries and other entities supported by the application platforms. However, when the field is added, recompilation may be needed. When multiple clients are using the system and structures are extended, other programs being run by the clients are affected by the recompilation being performed and may have their programs aborted.